Wednesday, November 09, 2016

Cri De Coeur

Tuesday's election has shocked me as much, I think, as any event in my life thus far. It really shouldn't have. Nate Silver, the best election forecaster there is, gave Trump a 30% chance to win the election. That's not great. You'd be a fool to want the 30% side of any bet. But it's certainly not zero. And 30% plays do sometimes come through. For example, in the American League Championship Series in 2004, the Boston Red Sox had about a 37% chance to win when Kevin Millar drew a walk to open the bottom of the ninth inning of Game Four, trailing 4-3. Not a great chance. Were I a Yankee fan, I wouldn't have been worried. But certainly not zero. And as history tells us, that particular 30% chance also cashed in.

I read my share of articles and analyses and blogs, and I listened to experts, and I read polls. I was pretty sure the election wasn't going to go this way. More to the point, I was pretty sure people were upset at the way things were, but they would go into the privacy of the voting booth and look at the choices and see one candidate who insults women, and handicapped people, and brown skinned people, a charlatan who lies, to quote Steve Harvey, when the truth will do, and say to themselves, "I love brown people and people with different abilities, people like that are in my family and my workplace and my church, and I'm not ready to have a president who thinks it's ok to be cruel to them, to make them feel less than because of something beyond their control." I really thought we were better than this. That we had grown. Matured. That we were far from perfect, but we were making progress.

Last night showed me how far we have yet to go.

Make no mistake, conservatives. This is your car to drive now. You control all of the branches of government. About a year from now, when people start announcing primary challenges and long term Congresspeople get serious opponents, you're going to realize that governing is really hard work, and you won't have anyone to blame but yourselves for wherever the country is at that point and whatever you have done or not done. If your past history holds, the economy will be in recession, the deficit will be exploding, and you'll be looking around for someone to blame your problems on. And Democrats will be holding up mirrors.

If you are a Trump supporter, I sincerely don't understand your vote. I've heard that he's a truth teller (he isn't), an outsider (he isn't), a successful businessman (he isn't), and a maverick (not even close.) What he is is a liar, a racist, a bully, and a lunatic. This man denies saying things that there is video tape of him saying. Grownup politicians don't do that. Four year olds do that. And don't give me that "he didn't mean it," or "he was just trying to be funny." 11 year olds use that excuse. Presidents don't.

I don't understand what you thought you were getting with your Trump vote, but I know what it says about you. It says you're petty, and mean, or at least you're ok with pettiness and meanness in your leader. It says you're ok with women being grabbed without their consent, or at least, you're ok with someone who does that. It says you put some dream of change (someone who's been in real estate in New York and New Jersey is going to root out corruption? Talk about foxes guarding henhouses!) ahead of the welfare of your fellow humans. Real people are going to get hurt over these next two years, and you caused it. I hope you are ok with that. I'll be sleeping like a baby, myself.

To paraphrase the old bumper sticker, "Don't Blame Me: I'm from New Jersey."

"No worse, there is none," thought I when the Supreme Court awarded the presidency to Dubya 16 numbing years ago. I was wrong. There is a worse. I don't know how any of us will be able to survive. Now that we've seen the swamp being drained, we find that the muck and the mire rise upward and we are in danger of being enveloped, all of us. This is no time to be getting old. And certainly no time to be young. And a terrible time to be middle-aged.